


that's not a question i need answered

by I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), anyways enjoy black widow wielding mjolnir, natasha deserved better and we all know it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 22:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20956298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames/pseuds/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames
Summary: Natasha Romanoff, alone on a battlefield full of wounded allies (friends), facing down a monster from the past (one that should already be dead), reaches for the only weapon she can. This was never a question she wanted answered...but sometimes knowledge is the price of war.





	that's not a question i need answered

**Author's Note:**

> nat lived somehow. is hawkeye dead? who knows? not me, that's for sure

Thanos hurls Captain America back—he hits with a crack, and rock roars greedily, burying him.

Iron Man swoops in, palms blazing. Thanos buries his blade in the soot-streaked mask, and wrenches it free with enough force to send the suit into free-fall. It skids through dirt and flames and settles, crooked. Broken.

Thor roars, and dives, axe swinging fast enough that it blurs. For a moment, they look evenly matched, god and Titan, swinging and dodging and locking blades. Lightning sparks through the god’s tangled beard, and he roars again, loud enough this time that Thanos falters—

But then the Titan rears back up, and slams Thor into the remains of a wall.

* * *

Nat wakes to blood, and the taste of smoke.

She gasps, and pain surges in her ribs, ferocious enough that for an instant, she blacks out.

_Breathe_, she tells herself, _oh god, breathe_, but—

She curls in on herself, clutching at her sides, and the bracelets sear through her suit, into her skin. Ancient, useless tech, overloaded already. She flings her arms wide, gritting her teeth against the tears, and electricity jolts into her wrists, coiling and burning.

But she opens her eyes.

The world is still on fire, the sky heavy with black smoke. She twists her head to the side, agonizingly, and Thanos comes into focus, looming over a figure crackling futilely with lightning.

“Thor,” she whispers, and chokes on the word. Her cough tastes like blood, and everything goes blurry for a second—

They’re losing. Again.

She squints, trying to force Thanos and Thor back into focus—and her wavering gaze falls instead on a hammer, resting just out of reach on the ground.

Nat grits her teeth, and rolls onto her stomach, eyes locked on the one weapon left on this goddamn battlefield that she might be able to use.

Might.

_that’s not a question I need answered_, her own voice whispers in her head, tauntingly carefree.

She pushes herself onto her knees, biting back the pain, forcing her gaze to stay steady in a spinning world.

_ignorance is bliss, agent romanoff_, Fury tells her, eyebrow raised.

She doesn’t know if she can stand, so she crawls. Drags herself through shrapnel and concrete chips and metal, a layer of it that shreds her palms.

_what greater honor_, a clipped Russian voice asks her,_ than to give up your own happiness for the sake of your nation?_

The hammer is right there. (And her stomach is churning and her head is spinning and her ribs are made of fire instead of bone and her wrists sting like poison and her vision flickers in and out.)

Sometimes need is a luxury.

No one knows that better than her.

Nat closes her eyes on the flaming battlefield and breathes, slow and steady.

_Please_, she thinks. _Please_.

_It’s not for me_.

And then she flexes her shaking fingers, and closes them—slowly, so slowly—around a blood-slicked handle.

* * *

Thor can feel death, hot fingers pressing at his chest, just beside his own blade.

It was the strongest he’d ever been—

_but you failed anyways_, a voice whispers, dry and cold and exactly like Hela’s.

Thanos’ teeth are bared in a grin. This will be the last thing he sees—the face of a foe he wasn’t good enough to beat. It was the last thing his brother saw…

_the sunshine of another world, brother? is that where it finds us?_ he thinks…and Thor Odinson closes his eyes.

Metal roars, and Thanos’ weight disappears so abruptly Thor is dizzy with the lack. The impact shudders into his bones, and then deeper.

He knows that hum.

Thor opens his eyes, just in time to watch Mjolnir hiss past him, back to the outstretched hand of—

“Agent Romanoff!” he blurts, (because he was expecting the captain, if any of them).

She glances at him for an instant, flashing a ghost of her old grin.

Then Thanos roars, and slams a foot into his face, and the world goes black.

* * *

Nat lets Thanos come, running life-or-death equations as familiar as breathing.

He’s deadly, and far too fast for his towering size. The old wound in Nat’s thigh is white-hot, and her wrists are still aching, burned by the smoking remains of ancient tech overloaded and useless, and she has no idea the speed or weight or strength required for the weapon in her hand.

But she has no other choice.

So she breathes in. Lets her ribs crack and scream, and black swell and recede at the edges of her vision. Breathes out—

Natasha Romanoff thrusts Mjolnir into the sky, and lightning crackles to life in her veins.


End file.
